1. Technical Field
The invention disclosed broadly relates to testing circuits and more particularly relates to a testing circuit for measuring very short duration current peaks.
2. Background Art
It is known in the industry that CMOS devices can draw large Idd current surges at maximum functional speed. These current surges can be due to inherent conditions during switching where the N-channel and the P-channel of a given device pair are both on momentarily or these current surges can be due to device defects. The device under test (DUT) may pass all functional parametric tests and indeed may perform the functions it was designed to do. However the problem is one of reliability due to this excessive surge current. The occurrence of large current transients is detrimental to the life of VLSI devices.
Current state of the art VLSI automatic test equipment (ATE) does not offer the capability to measure large, short duration, current transients occurring in CMOS VLSI devices.